The First Last Never
by Sinclair London
Summary: Some things in this world are unspeakable: certain curses, for example, certain turns of phrase and appellations. There are some things Scorpius figured he ought not promise himself when the promise was impossible to keep, the first being, "Never say never." SCOROSE
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

September 1, 2017

_The Hogwarts Express_

* * *

There are a few places one would imagine a wand ought not go. Common sense dictates that jamming a stick of enchanted wood into any orifice, cramming it down the front of one's pants, or up one's arse, would not be the most reasonable proposition for someone with the tendency towards bodily preservation - alas, not all wizards are clever enough to be sorted into Ravenclaw.

Scorpius might of thought of that before he'd made such a proposal to the feral creature stalking him through the length of the Hogwarts Express.

The hex rammed into the door to the third train carriage, splintering wood and brass and leaving a little scorch mark a little to the left of Scorpius Malfoy's ear. He dove into the next train car, not stopping to check if the door slammed behind him to block the harpy's pursuit.

Wand gripped in one sweaty fist, he shot a desperate look over his shoulder and retaliated in kind:

"_Densaugeo!_"

Students pressed their faced to the glass of their compartments; some slid open the doors to see what the fuss was about, but Scorpius wasn't paying attention to them; nor did he register that the hex he'd cast fizzled and dripped its remnants in splatters along the carpeting as he ran.

His father had told him the story behind that one; how it had worked brilliantly on the wretch's mother when they were children. Scorpius had never cast it before. Scorpius hadn't cast anything, really. He had figured it would just come to him naturally, the instant he flexed his fingers around eleven inches of black walnut with a dragon heartstring core. He was a pureblood, for Merlin's sake!

"Do you know what Aurors who've defeated Voldemort teach their children?" she yelled after him. "They don't put your face on a Chocolate Frog card for just nothing!"

Another hex ghosted past him. Much stronger. A stinger, at that. The girl was eleven - his age - and her repertoire of minor curses and hexes put his pathetic inherited arsenal to shame.

The last car was coming up. He would reach the end of the train, and then what? Where would he go?

Scorpius' heart did a flip flop, and he ran faster - his robes slapping at his legs with each step. He wished he could disapparate. He wished he had his broom. He'd fly her down and skewer her.

"My dad taught me a few things before I got my acceptance letter - the first being that no witch or wizard can ever be too careful - cleverness will only take you so far, but you can only be so smart. Sometimes, its best to be tough enough to take a bludger or two to the back of the head."

"I bet your father's taken a few himself," he shot back.

Scorpius heard the next hex as it winged by: a whoosh of static that landed with a crackle.

"The second," she continued, "dad taught me the theoretical applications of several defensive spells - just in case someone tried to lace my pudding with a puking pastile or fainting fancy at dinner. My Uncle George has a fondness for mischief that's rubbed off on my cousins, you see."

Another hex pinged off the ceiling, sending down sparks.

"I happen to _like_ my pudding untainted. That's where the offensive stuff comes in."

"Rosie!" someone shouted. The boy's voice cracked on the second syllable.

"In a minute, Al!"

Scorpius turned, and it was his undoing: his robes wound around his legs, and in a moment, the wind fled his lungs in a rush. He stared at the train car's ceiling; a light speckling of golden stars winking at him as the world swam. The train rocked from side to side, and down on the carpet with a few stray Bertie Bott's, he wheezed, waiting for the inevitable.

He felt her footsteps - delicate little impressions that tiptoed around him. When the girl stopped, she loomed overhead: barely four and a half feet of Gryffindor-bound insanity already tucked into her school robes; her tie knotted perfectly. The Hogwarts crest on the breast confirmed his worst suspicions: she was a first year too.

That she'd lain him flat meant she was better than him at at least one thing.

"Are you alright?" she asked around a broad smile. There was nothing malicious in it, but he hated her just the same.

Red curls hung around her face in snarls; a wild, untamed fire lit her face with something that put a feverish colour into the freckles dusting her cheeks.

One of the Weasley brood.

"Just brilliant," he spat. His father would demand to know what happened to him. He'd have to send an owl explaining that a Weasley had ran him down on his very first day away at school, and then there would be the threats about being pulled out of Hogwarts and being sent straight to Durmstrang, or worse, that American Wizarding Academy in _Massachusetts_. He could barely spell Massachusetts much less willfully give up the comforts of England for it; a niggling doubt that it wasn't even a co-ed academy spun the more immediate and impossible concern that his father might make him go in drag if that's what it came down to. Scorpius shuddered.

She jabbed her wand under his chin, pressing just a little as to not leave a mark, but intending to leave a lasting mental scar instead.

"You're Scorpius." She said it imperiously; like she'd known who he was before they'd even boarded the train. "I doubt you'll forget this in the future, but just so you know: my name is Rose, and my father told me _all_ about you."

A jelly bean mashed its yellow guts into the carpet, just within his peripheral vision.

"Where did you learn all that?" he demanded. "You're not allowed doing magic outside of Hogwarts. You'll get detention before you're even sorted."

She blinked at him; inquisitive eyes flecked with hazel swam in his vision. She dropped her wand, tucking it into an inside pocket and mercifully out of sight. Scorpius deflated, hoping she didn't notice.

Shaking her hair out of her face, she gave him a beatific grin, and pulled him to a sitting position by the front of his robes.

"I read our textbooks through for a little light preparation this summer." She shrugged. "And some of my mother's old scrolls. We have books stacked on top of books in her study. This is just -" She waved. "Field testing. Doesn't it feel good to use magic for once?"

He bristled. "I don't know. I barely got a curse in edgewise."

Rose tipped her head like she couldn't hear the raising tempo of his blood as it boiled in his veins. It made his ears seem as if they were stuffed with cotton. Field testing, indeed.

"My father -" he began, then stopped. Swallowed back the threat. He wanted to tell her that her father would hear about this, but that was a lie. He'd obliviate absolutely every last living soul who'd seen him being run down by a Weasley before that happened. The indignity of it had Scorpius inching backwards, pulling his legs out from under her, and rolling onto his hands and knees.

"What about him?" She offered him a hand, which he ignored.

"Forget it."

"Rosie, what did you do?" A boy with dark brown hair hanging in his eyes stopped behind them, panting. He held his wand awkwardly; like it didn't quite fit his hand yet.

That was a relief.

"Are you alright?" he asked him, looking Scorpius over for scorch marks or gaping holes.

"I would be much better if you both just backed off."

He got to his feet, taking inventory of the dust smears on his knees and the whizbee smear on his elbow. Shoving fingers through his hair, he straightened, pulling back his shoulders. He had two inches on the girl, and by Merlin, he would lord them over her for as long as he could. Scorpius looked down his nose at her and sniffed, "You missed."

Though she smiled, Rose narrowed her eyes. "Is that a challenge for the next time?"

"I'm not volunteering for target practice, if that's what you're getting at."

"We could take turns," she offered; something wicked in her smile.

"How generous of you."

"It's an offer only available to boys who refer to me as a - what did he call me?" She looked up, tapping the tip of her wand against her lower lip. Scorpius battled the urge to grab her hand and have her hex herself in the mouth with her own wand. His fingers twitched.

"Um," said the boy named Al. "Guys?"

"Not now, Albus." She continued to smile in a way that hinted at some darker agenda. It prickled in a way that should have been foretelling, but Scorpius ignored it for the immediate understanding that this girl - this half-blood witch - had the audacity to rub it in his face that the conciliation prize was another round of back and forth.

Scorpius leaned in to her ear, the tickle of her hair against his nose a sure sign that he was standing too close to her. He said, "An over-achieving, loud-mouthed, carrot-headed banshee, who smells like a troll's backside - probably because there's a bit of something foul sullying the family line."

He ad-libbed the last bit.

Maybe it was too much.

Both hexes flew, but only hers connected with its intended target: Scorpius wobbled, his feet feeling bizarrely disconnected from his knees and his hips; he fought against it, his muscles straining, but eventually Scorpius dropped - his legs continuing to tangle in a tango, kicking at the walls and floor.

Rose Weasley stood over him, her fists on her hips.

"They do this is muggle Westerns," she informed him. "One guy shoots at another guy's feet and tells him to dance." She aimed her wand again. "Dance, Malfoy."

"You... witch!"

Behind her, Albus had slouched against the wall. Looking down at himself, he managed, "Rose?"

Scorpius pointed at his legs, shouting, "_Finite incantatem_!" The spell fizzled from his wand. He didn't have the skill, nor the focus to direct the spell. A wisp of magic trailed, breaking apart before it could connect.

"Ask me to stop it," she demanded. "Go on. And say 'please.'"

"Stop it, Weasley!"

"That's not the magic word."

"Rose." Albus again.

"It's a muggle colloquialism. I find it's quite fitting."

"Spend time with a lot of muggles, do you?"

"My grandparents are muggles you intolerant git - Say 'please'!"

"Never!"

"_Rose_."

There was something desperate and pleading in that one word that made them stop and turn. Albus, three-shades towards ashen, a fine beading of sweat on his brow, turned to both of them with wide eyes. He clutched his stomach. Scorpius' legs continued to thrash wildly, but despite the distraction, he could see that the skin around the boy's eyes had thinned to reveal red-rings around the lashes, dilated pupils; the capillaries beneath his eyes turned blue, giving him a haunted look.

"Al?" Rose's voice ratcheted up several octaves, she spun, catching him before he could drop to his knees. "Albus!" The pair hit the floor.

His spell - Scorpius looked at his wand in disbelief - the curse had worked. It hadn't hit Rose but rather it must have clipped Albus in the process.

His wand thrummed as if waking up from a long slumber. It sent pins into his fingers, temporarily filling them with a numbing vibration so strong it made his entire arm shake. He knew this time that it would work - he knew it like he hadn't known before. The power coiled around his bones at the base of his tailbone and rose, winding serpentine with grace around his spine and threading through his limbs like venom. The feeling flooded him; lit the ends of his nerves with something fierce and hungry. He pointed his wand at the boy, at the work he'd botched trying to hit Weasley with a curse.

"_F-finite incantatum_," he managed. Scorpius' hair stood on end. The world hummed around him.

Magic.

Albus gasped; a rasping, desperate noise. Colour flooded his cheeks, and he gulped the air.

The world flooded in. The lights dimmed. Stunned faces gathered around them; the small corridor crammed with curious students. Someone shouted that the Prefects needed to make their way through.

Scorpius' legs continued their tarantallegra.

Rose looked up, tear-streaked, her wand forgotten.

Scorpius smiled at last, panting with elation mingled with fading dread.

"I did it," he exclaimed, breathless - not yet quite believing he wasn't a complete failure.

Rose drew her fist back and cracked him squarely in the jaw.

Stunned, legs struggling to kick the thrashing girl off of their own accord — that's how the Hufflepuff Prefects found them: Scorpius Malfoy, jinxed and bloodied, Albus Potter, cursed but recovering, and Rose Weasley — nursing a swelling fist that she would deny potions for until the split in the skin healed and left a scar to remind her of that day forevermore.

They said later that it was a day that would go down in infamy.

It would also be the last time that Scorpius Malfoy ever let Rose Weasley best him.


	2. The Calm Before

**Chapter The First  
**The Calm Before

* * *

The lakelight sent a cascade of hazy shivers across his parchment; blues and greens, a tide of aquatic shimmers that cast everything in his particular corner of the common room with slabs of narcotic color. He smoothed his hands across the book, crossing out another notation on his parchment with a terse little flick.

The entire mahogany monstrosity rocked as Danton Zabini slammed into the edge of the desk with a mortar and pestle, scattering an assortments of dried plants that left flecks across Scorpius' notes. His cauldron followed, upended, presumably containing something wriggling between it and the parchment below.

Scorpius didn't look up.

"You were kicked out of the potions classroom again."

Danton snorted, and placed a bottle and two glasses down with more care than the rest of the lot.

"Scotch." It wasn't an offer, and Scorpius didn't accept, but Zabini poured them each a glass anyway. "It's been a bugger of a day, ending with - you guessed it - the final insult in a calamitous week. Yes, Malfoy. My particular breed of mad genius isn't regarded favorably by Professor Baker. It is 'irresponsible and quite possibly dangerous' to create experimental potions on school grounds. As if the glut of people we're expecting tomorrow night _care_ about reading a bloody warning label."

He fell into his chair, his legs splaying under the table.

"She docked me fifty points. It was all I could do to preserve a few drops of the potion I was working on before she threw me out of the lab too." He huffed. Scorpius looked up through his fringe, his quill hovering, expecting further damages to his perfect penmanship.

"Alas, with this the last eve to observe our solemnities, I must prepare," Danton continued. "The work does not end because some fool teacher things that the fumes off my latest concoction are hallucinogenic. 'That's the point!' I told her. Do you think she bloody well cares that my great work is to enable every seventh-year student the possibility of temporary disassociation and euphoria with no ill-effects the day after? Hardly."

"You couldn't just order a crate of Firewhiskey for everyone?"

Danton pinched the bridge of his nose. "I didn't hear that."

"That must be a coincidence. I'm pretending that I didn't hear a word of what you've been rambling about since you waltzed in here."

"Party, Malfoy. Party tomorrow." He drove the reminder home by bumping Scorpius' drink towards him. "It's the end of term. The end of seven years hard toil in these hallowed walls, and now it's time for the best and brightest of our year to venture forth into the world and make something of our family fortunes rather than doing something productive with ourselves."

Scorpius made a noise in agreement, and plucked up his glass. "Right." He lifted it in toast, and added drily, "To inheritance and familial expectation."

Danton threw his head back, barking a laugh that shocked the third years on the opposite side of the common room; they sat in a cluster, studying furiously for their O. . One of them yipped, startled by the sound.

"That's not homework," Danton commented, gesturing with his glass before he drained it. "I've seen that book before. It weighs about eighty kilos and I'm fairly certain that I've seen your name scrawled on the catalogue card at least twice a year for the duration we've been here."

The title on the spine read _Great Wizarding Families of Britain: True Origins of the Sacred Twenty Eight_.

"You're not going to give up, are you? We have a handful of moments left at this school to be brazenly self-indulgent and you're squandering your time on petty rivalry."

"There must be something," he said, staring at a page he'd read several times over. "Some inconsistency; some loophole that I've missed. The chapter on the Weasleys documents their lineage until the 1930's, then things get a bit wooly. There's an entire annex that refutes the lot of it - claiming there's some muggle blood in the mix, but no birth certificates to verify it." He stretched. "Her mother's muggle born. The Grangers are no help. I checked her astrological charts and went through the family tree anyway."

"Looking for what, exactly?"

He lifted a shoulder. "Leverage? Something to even out the playing field?"

Danton snorted. "Normal people duel, you know. They hex each other until they're blue in the face and they've won back their pride, or the other person ends up dead. Or they shag. They shag a lot, Scorpius." He raised both eyebrows as if accusing him of the contrary. Scorpius ignored the implication.

"Father wouldn't have that. He made some sort of truce when he was a boy and mother swears on her last breath that he'll not tell me the particulars until they're both gone and maybe not even then." He clapped the tome shut with a waft of dust and the hearty sound of pages sucking their secrets back between them. "I think he's afraid that I'll cover their portraits and store them in the cellar. She'd never be able to nag me again."

"You took Muggle Studies," Danton reminded him, aghast. "Wasn't that enough to shut them up?"

He shrugged. "It was interesting. If anything Muggle Studies was encouraging - their legends are fantastic."

"Go on." Danton refilled their glasses.

Scorpius slid the book to the side, tilting the crystal glass so it caught the reflections from the windows and cast rainbows onto the table.

"Every hero in every mythology in Muggle culture has a weakness," he began. "Achilles had a spot in his heel. Hercules couldn't cut his hair. Superman couldn't be near kryptonite -"

Danton rolled his eyes. "But what does this all have to do with _Weasley_?"

Scorpius took a sip, enjoying the smokey flavor. It was a good drink. "There's no sense parrying with the enemy if you don't understand what makes her tick. You'll lose every time."

Scorpius sat back in his chair, the shadows folding his features into something deeper where the light failed to catch his expression. Still, he smirked broadly enough that Danton caught the smile.

"You've matched her academically. You've drawn in several Quidditch matches against her, and the last duel -" he chuckled, "the last duel is still being written about on the walls of the library carrels. I think there are pictograms of it, in fact."

Zabini set about arranging his mortar and pestle, then stopped, his hands hovering.

"Every hero has a weakness," Scorpius repeated, raising an eyebrow.

"You took Muggle Studies because of her, didn't you?" Zabini demanded.

Scorpius lifted a shoulder, indolent. "What would you do to gain the advantage?"

He scrubbed a hand over his head, loosened his tie, shucked his robes off and yanked his chair forward.

"Lie, cheat, steal, maim," he said matter-of-factly. "Then disapparate."

"Thank Merlin we're not directly related. I'll direct any future letters to your cell in Azkaban, shall I?"

Danton beamed. "Since you've already accepted that my deviance will be my downfall, does that mean you'd like to assist me in the creation of perfection this evening, kind sir? I'm convinced there's a market for it. RSVPs have been flooding in by owl; we'll have a good portion of all the houses down here after the Prefects finish their rounds."

"If you poison anyone with that, they will send the Aurors after you. Maybe even Harry Potter himself." He looked down his nose at the herbs Danton ripped apart - a collection of small portions of foxglove and hyssop and bay laurel. A hint of atropine belladonna - but only a dash. Danton offered him the pestle.

A knock echoed through the common room. Someone either forgot the password, or someone was outside who didn't have it. Scorpius figured the latter.

"As it stands, I have another engagement this evening. He might help you, though." Scorpius stood, eyeing him. "Just promise me you won't make him mix anything with his hands. You laid him up in the hospital wing for a week the last time because bits of opium got under his nails."

"What 'engagement'?" demanded Danton. "Honestly, Malfoy?"

"Further studies of a particular nature," he murmured, brushing aside a first year as he approached the stone door. He trailed his wand against it, peeling away the locking charms, and let the stones slide away to reveal the gloom of the dungeon beyond.

Standing in the alcove, looking mussed and a little out of place in Gryffindor red, but definitely no less comfortable for it, Albus Potter grinned beneath the warm glow of his lighting charms.

"Malfoy." He nodded in greeting, and Scorpius waved him inside.

"Zabini," he called. "Get another glass. Potter's finally here."


End file.
